


incomplete

by epiproctan



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Angst, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 04:11:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2296145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiproctan/pseuds/epiproctan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Didn’t I tell you that I was conscious while my body was comatose in the hospital? …I could always hear your sobs, Aoba.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	incomplete

Ren

 

can hear

 

little sounds of sadness

 

inside his mind.

 

A low sigh, a sniffle, a grunt of resistance against the tears. A choked and muffled sob.

It’s at the back of his head where his skull meets the top of his neck. It sends gentle vibrations into the far ends of his mind. It is quiet and soft and cold and distant. It’s familiar.

He wants to make it stop. He would do anything to make it stop. And yet he embraces it, pulls it towards him, but—

 

—Aoba’s eyes still fill with tears.

He’s empty. He’s so empty, in a way that he’s never felt before, and everything is five degrees too cold. He tries not to think about it, but he still feels it, and it comes into his mind. He’s alone, he’s so alone, and this is a different isolation from what he’s ever known. He’s been abandoned.

He thinks about Ren. Ren, who had always been with him. Ren, who had always protected him. Ren, who had held him in his infinite warmth. Ren, always there. Ren, who loved him. Ren, who he loved. Ren. Ren. Ren.

He calls his name over and over but gets no response, not from within or without, and he crumbles in on himself. His legs lose their will to walk and his hands lose their will to work and his eyes lose their will to stay open in the too-bright world. His mind loses its will to focus on anything but the memory of the arms around him that made him feel so whole and finally complete. Time passes slowly and traveling through the daily world seems so thick and viscous. All he can do is fall helplessly onto his bed and curl in on himself like a leaf on fire, burning to ash. His lifeless attempts to brush him from his mind fail, and—

 

—Ren can hear it resonate somewhere at the base of his brain. The sound of teardrops running over skin flows in and gradually his mind is submerged in saltwater. This is only the quiet drizzle before the thunderstorm, though. He has experienced this before, these faraway summons.

Here in his mind it’s the only thing in existence right now. Although it’s dampened and tempered, it echoes throughout the hollow expanses of a consciousness without senses. He knows that he is in a body, and he knows whose body it is, but it has been and continues to be something unusable to him. Until the time that he can properly access it, this sound is his company. The soft cries that start like calm shallow waves washing up on sand. They grow with time like the tide coming in, his own name echoing louder and louder between his ears.

He thinks of a body smaller than his, one which fit nicely into his imagined arms. He held it once, felt its softness and the way it curved into him, in one of the happiest moments he’d ever known. His love now is just as strong, if not stronger, than the love he’d moved with then. He’s had time to immerse himself in it, to contemplate it, and in the dark empty endless days the only solace is the bright memory of a beach and a warmth that he’d always wished for.

He thinks of this now, combating the mourning, hoping his mental images will somehow reach back across the gap and help the one crying. It’s not for his own happiness that he thinks of these things but for the happiness of the one whose mere existence is something for him to revel in. He wants to bring the kind of brightness into that life that that life provided to him. For someone who is the only reason to exist, he wants to give and give and give.

But he can’t do anything.

So he merely remembers. He remembers a time when this voice was laughing instead of crying, soothing his ears with its absolute perfection. When Ren gathered everything that was important to him into his arms and held it, and treated it gently, and loved it with everything that he had. He remembers the taste on his tongue, the warm smooth skin under his fingertips. The burning deep within him that drove him, powered at its root by the same love that simmers in his consciousness day and night. His intense need and longing, and the relief that joining together gave him.

He wishes he could go back to that time, when they were connected again, within each other, and freeze it, so that Aoba would only cry out in pleasure and never in pain. And yet—

 

—as Aoba shivers in despair, a thought twinges at the edge of his mind. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it because it’s painful to remember, but it trickles in anyway, bringing with it the red agony of hopeless desire. A beach, a deep voice, a strong body, knowing hands. The memory is so important to him and yet he doesn’t want it. He wishes he could live in that moment, that absolute beautiful peak of his joy, and the knowledge that he may never know such things again drives into him with a pain that won’t dull.

He wonders if one day it will ever cease. If he’ll wake up in the morning thinking of something besides that low voice and the way it made his existence feel right. If he’ll fall asleep with someone else’s arms around him and be content with that. But it’s impossible. Ren, only Ren, could ease this pain, and for the rest of his existence he will be stuck lusting after a momentary dream.

He can almost feel the fingers tracing across his skin, but he can’t _really_ , and there is the problem. Thinking of that protective hold, he coughs around the hoarse lump in his throat. He had never felt the kind of warmth that he had in that moment before, and it had left him with an insatiable thirst for more. Now it’s seared into his mind and on his body like an invisible brand, and as the memory lurches ceaselessly forward through his imagination he considers the sound of his name so passionate and burning and raw in his ear. He remembers the soft familiar scent of Ren’s skin and the way his tongue felt, gentle yet provoking, along the lines of his body. Then, like now, he’d wanted to be connected, to feel Ren in every way possible, and the pleasure that had surged through him at that time was as much joy at being together with the one he loved as physical release.

But now he feels no pleasure. Aoba feels only the cracks of shattered feelings spiderwebbing through him, and a yearning that throbs as freshly in his chest as it did on the first day, and the unbearable pang in his lower body that pushes into him whenever he thinks of that time. Feeling good or comfortable isn’t something he’s concentrating on. No, the only thing he wants right now is to not feel like he’s constantly on the verge of shattering to pieces.

There was once a hand, broad, strong hand that held him, and then made its way so pleasurably over his body until it touched him with a kind of tender desperation that he’d never known could exist in the world. He wishes for that hand. Not merely for the hand itself but for the force that moved it, for the person living underneath, separate from himself and yet always a part of him.

Aoba slips beneath the waistband of his pants. It’s an unconscious motion and when he notices he immediately feels like the remainders of his sanity are collapsing in over his head, and without the absent foundation he’d built his entire life on he trembles. But his fingers move anyway. They find and catch and loop around himself, the whisper of an imagined breath hot in his ear. The memory of someone else’s touch is overwhelming, and he shudders—

 

—causing Ren’s mind to shake. And the tremor brings heat, an angry searing from somewhere outside of him, and it melds with his memory until he no longer feels like he wants to touch but _needs_ to. The need to touch Aoba isn’t a new sensation, but it has never hurt so badly. For him, for Aoba, he pushes it aside and tries to dampen the fire into something less painful and more encouraging.

But the sobs are driving deeper now, drilling past the layers of careful mental images to the fear and despair. It’s easy for Ren to want to give in and cry with Aoba too. Ren knows these feelings. Ren knows loneliness, and he knows separation. He knows a love that can’t reach. It’s easy to feel lost and hopeless, to empty himself out and explore the hollowness inside his own desolation.

That’s not what he wants, though. He wants Aoba’s happiness. And the only thing he can do about that right now is to provide strength for him. He steels himself against the waves of pain and brings back the memory of fine sand and a warm body. Aoba laughs in his memory, a flawless sound, and Ren loses himself enough to pretend that it’s almost happening for a moment. The idea lifts him pleasantly.

But it’s not real.

The reverberations of Aoba’s sadness instead invade again, overlapping against his memory angrily. He needs to fight it. For Aoba, _for Aoba_ , everything he’s ever done has been for Aoba. Even this semi-consciousness, this battle against disappearing from this world and this body. And now _for Aoba_ he reaches out, supports, uplifts. It hurts and it hurts and it hurts but Aoba needs him and Aoba hurts _more_ , and that is the pain that Ren is feeling.

He gathers the scattered shards of strength and happiness he can find submerged in the flood and holds it up, presses it forward. He imagines Aoba’s skin, its smoothness and warmth and how good it feels flush against him. He wants to taste that skin, touch it, savor it—

 

—and Aoba can still almost feel those phantom fingers on him, and he wants to, he wants to be touched. He wishes that hand on him wasn’t his own, but one larger that instinctively knew what caused his hips to jolt. The arms that enveloped him were simultaneously protective and desiring, and he misses the sensation of another’s heartbeat thundering next to his, of blood rushing through someone else’s veins around him. He takes great care in remembering the way he was cradled, tucked neatly into that firm hold, something to be kept close and treasured.

The salinity of his tears wets his lips as he shifts his body into a more comfortable position and strokes himself, pretending and trying to hide from his own thoughts and feelings. He struggles to keep back the sobs but they wrack his shoulders as he remembers a different taste on his lips and thinks of Ren’s warm, soft probing tongue, and meeting it, and what it felt like to kiss someone who loves him completely. He thinks of how his entire body shivered with the passion and how, leaning forward into that kiss, his mind went blank with the intimacy it contained.  

He finds himself panting unevenly, and some breaths come with hoarse shaking moans. He wraps an arm around his own torso as though to hold himself together, but it doesn’t feel like the arm he wants. It’s not strong enough and it’s trembling and it doesn't hold him with the love that he needs, the thing that fills him with overflowing joy. That’s absent but he thinks of it anyway, and he wants that arm to be what’s holding him as he jerkily strokes himself.

In his mind that arm pulls him back, firmly into Ren’s lap, and he remembers something hot and stiff and electrifying pressing against him. The idea of having caused that in Ren had made his heart pound then and makes his heart hurt now, a gaping panging ache in his chest like he’s breathing in saltwater. But he still longs for that sensation, the feeling of being so surrounded inside and out by someone he loves so much. The fullness inside of him, moving with him, finding the secret places that make his body tense with the sweetness of it. He craves that intense togetherness, but in this moment he only has his own palm and his own fingers and his own running tears.

 But still he’s unable to stop his body from reacting this way to his memories, from jolting when he runs his thumb over his own moist tip and imagines it to be Ren’s eager touch instead. And this fills him with a dense, unbearable loneliness.

It hurts so badly and he doesn’t want to be doing this. He wishes he could stop.

But he can’t stop.

“Unh, Ren!” Aoba cries between near-hysteric sobs, and—

 

— _Aoba, Aoba,_ Ren calls back, but he knows that the words don’t reach. But he says it in his head over and over until it feels like his entire existence is just that one word, the name of another, and he has faded into nothing but the echo of that sound. That was all he was meant to be in the first place, after all, and if it could make Aoba happy then he’d be glad to return to that state.

But it won’t make Aoba happy. Only his presence will make Aoba happy, and that’s the one thing he can’t give him right now. The knowledge slashes at him. His mind bleeds tears. He wants to hold him and protect him and keep him from all this pain. That’s his job, after all, and right now he’s failing, but he’s trying so hard and there’s nothing more he can do.

He knows Aoba’s misery, he can feel it strongly mirrored in himself. And he wishes it was his hands learning the feeling of that skin instead of Aoba’s own, and he wants to reach out and touch. But he has nothing to touch with, and he can only long for that intense connection and that display of love. He strains and tenses and pushes and tries and tries and _tries_. But for all his effort he receives nothing, nothing but the knowledge that he once held that body and _felt_ it in every way he wanted to, outside and inside, the burning heat.

Ren’s calling grows desperate, but it doesn’t do anything. It has no effect, and there is no change, and he still hears the sobs and the cries. _Aoba_ —

 

—can’t hear him. But he can hear his own sobs and his own moans and his own weakness in his own fragile body. And it’s his and no one else’s, and he’s empty and alone. And he feels _disgusting,_ frantic and hopeless, and wrong in every way. He jerks his hips forward into his own hand and it hurts, it feels terrible, but he’s doing it over and over and over again, and his body needs it but his mind rejects it with all its power.

His thighs are shaking and his muscles feel tight and his eyes are clenched closed, tears spilling from between his eyelashes. He pictures Ren’s face and it aches and the ache shoots straight down to his hips, and he’s drowning in it. It’s impossible to resist and he feels himself so close to the pain. He wants Ren, he misses Ren, he loves Ren, Ren. Ren. Ren. _Ren._

“Ren—!” chokes Aoba, his voice high and strained and agonized as his legs give a spasm and he releases, and—

 

—for the first time, Ren’s body jolts physically. He feels it, not just in his mind but in real thighs and real hips and real nerve endings, and it’s like nothing he’s ever experienced before to the point that it almost feels good. But not good enough to overcome the yearning of every part of himself, the discomfort and the pain. Instead it immediately turns into an ache that throbs hard enough for him to wish for the tiniest second that he had never split from Aoba, that they were still one being.

But then he couldn’t love him the way he did now. Love is the greatest gift Aoba has ever given him, and it isn’t only a desire but a _necessity_ for him to return it.

So all he can do is listen to the sobs in his mind, over and over, the harsh intakes of breath and their painful ragged exhales. They begin to fade from his consciousness, slipping away in the way that they had come, disappearing down stinging waterways and leaving hollow gaps in their wake. It trickles and then flows and then rushes down and back and out, and then slowly and more slowly again, and now there are only puddles, remnants of a fire too hot and a memory too longed for. Ren listens but doesn’t hear it anymore, only whispers and sniffles and sighs, fading quickly to soft sounds of grass rustling.

He holds onto the last of it with all his strength, cradles the voice to him, rememorizes its timbre over and over and over again. He tries to bury himself in it, but there’s too little of it and it turns to wisps within him, disappearing from existence, vanishing into the past.

He lets go of the nothing that he was holding. And he waits.

 

Aoba has no strength.

Exhaustion and regret, rather than pleasure, rolls through him. He’s limp, lifeless. All of his muscles seem to atrophy at once, and he sinks further and further into his bed. He wants it to swallow him whole and never come up for breath.

Instead he is swallowed by unconsciousness, and falls into a deep, despairing sleep.


End file.
